For the Love of Restoration

Layers and Layers

After pulling away layer after layer on the walls, ceilings and floors, we finally discovered an original element of the house. The amount of layers of flooring in the dining/kitchen area was a little mind blowing. There were so many layers that the back kitchen door was about a foot above the original wood floor. We didn’t count, but I would bet there were 7 different layers of linoleum alone. As you can see he planks were in rough shape and did not cover the entire space. Instead of trashing them altogether, we decided to carefully remove all of the planks and subfloor (which was also pretty awesome) and relay them in another room of the house.

If you look towards the upper left corner of the photo above you can see the layers of flooring that was put down over the years.

The original floors in the living room had at some point been completely removed, which is a bummer. The upstairs back two bedrooms however still had there flooring.

At this point we had taken off the layer of paneling in the bedrooms and removed the divider wall. This room will be the master bedroom with a full bath. The tongue and groove flooring had large gaps and was damaged in places so we carefully removed the boards and plan on relaying them in the living room. I think they will clean up well and will be a way for us to show what this house may have looked like when is was built.

We have also been busy organizing the wood that come out of the house to reuse it. If you think about pulling nails with the right frame of mind it can be kind of zen like ; )